Lynd and Gilbert Rivers

The next morning, Glenn had a minor freak out, thinking about how far we had to travel, and how we wanted to spend some time in the Kimberley before it got too hot.  We discussed timings, and decided that we had to move on today.  An hour later, we decided that that was ridiculous, and how could we possibly move from this spot.  The on-again-off-again meant we’d started the packup, but it wasn’t too much of a struggle to stop all that and just sit down for a coffee.

Part of our consideration was that we had discovered, for the first time ever, that we had a smashed back windscreen.  We resolved that it must have been that noise we heard during the day before, which we passed off as “don’t know what that was”.  It had obviously been a rock bouncing back off the camper, something that had not happened at all so far, not even onto the tailgate etc.

Given the need to fix the window, we resolved that leaving early was also no help, because we’d get into Normanton / Karumba on Sunday, which was no good.  Much better to wait it out here.

 We spent the day playing in the area, looking down at the river and croc spotting.  It all looked delightful for swimming, but there was the potential of having your arm or leg ripped off by a salty. 

We decided to have a roast that night, especially given we’d collected a heap of wood the night before.

We cook a lot of camp roasts, pretty much every weekend camp we are at home.  This one though had to rate as one of the top 10 we’ve ever had.  Everything just seemed perfect, the beef, the vegies, and most especially the gravy!!!!   To top THAT off, Savannah had been asking if we could cook damper.  We’d done it once before months ago, and she remembered that when you have a fire, you can cook damper.  Who could refuse her!!!!  Admittedly it wasn’t the BEST damper we’d ever done (one we cooked in Cairns for everyone was close to our best), but it was great sitting up, in front of a perfect fire, with the girls, eating damper and jam.  Life’s pretty good.

Regretfully leaving the next day, we did nearly 5 hours on the road, which the girls soaked up easily, (again), and made it to Gilbert River.  This was another pretty speccy place, and we found a little hole in the scrub to setup our camper and call home.  The prickles stopped us exploring too much, but the view of the river did us perfectly.  We were rewarded with a beautiful ‘desert’ sunset, and equally spectacular sunrise.  This is why we love this type of country.

The next morning was an easy run to the bitumen, and a right hand turn to Karumba.

Our view of the Gilbert River